Language in LD-Preparation

Hi,

I don’t know a better title for this thread than the one I finally used.
What I want to say is the following: Many ppl on this board don’t use English as their mother-language. But almost everything you find about Lucid Dreaming is written in English. So they want you to "tell yourself everytime before going to bed: “The next time I am dreaming I will realize that I am dreaming” " and so on.
Now my question is: What do you do? Do you - before finally going to sleep - repeat such sentences in English or do you translate them to your mother-language? What is better for preparing your mind to LD? Does your language-processing brain-part understand such sentences both equally? I mean, does your subconscious work better with instructions given to it in your mother-language than in English? Or does it simply not matter?

Any answers are appreciated…

This is very interesting indeed.
I normally translate all into Polish,my first language.And while i was reading your post i started to wonder wheter its good or not.Hmmm,i still dont know the answer,but considering recent lack of lds i decided to give it a go and see.From tonight i start thinking and give myself suggestions in english.
Im very keen to see what happens.
If we can solve how important language is we might be a step closer to our goals.
take care

what are your results, jack? I am very interested in how the language used while talking to our subconscious influences the efficiency.

What about all the other LDers out here?

Nothing so far,but its been only a week.And to be honest i didnt had a chance to try it like it should be done.I mean i switched to english while doing the suggestions but i do them rather briefly recently.Work and coming home late:(

It would make sense if you didn’t have to say it in english. As long as it means the same thing it should work with your “mother-language”, unless you’ve been learning english for awhile.

Its to make most of thinking about lds more “compatibile” Tride:)Blank shot it might be but worth trying.

Personally, I think converting the instructions (particularly those used for autosuggestion) into your strongest language would be more effective. It’s likely that most of your dreams will use your mother-langauge in speech and written text, and so it seems reasonable to me that any suggestions you’ve given yourself in English will not be so easily linked to part of the dream.

Although, the most important part of preparing your mind for lucid dreaming is setting the intention visually. You can chant anything you like, but the idea (for WILD, anyway) is to imagine yourself noticing some common dreamsigns and becoming lucid. Maybe it depends on the individual technique.

I remember when I was in germany my dreams played out in german. But I guess change once we mature so it won’t have much relevance…

Use your strongest language, the one that is most natural for you…
I use selfhynosis and the subconsiousness works with association witch is rooted in feeling and experiencing, wich in this case is your strongest language before choosing a foreign one. So i agree with Atheist.

Jeff

How come we say mother-language, sounds weird,hehe.

any suggestions?

well i did not know the exact english word for this. in german this is “Muttersprache” which consists of Mutter :smile:mother) plus Sprache :smile:language). I just looked in my dictionary which says that the exact English expression is “native language” or “mother tongue”. so i was close :wink:

Hmm, when I do stuff like autosuggestion I usually do it in german.
However, when thinking about dreams I often use terms that are used in this forum.That also happens when I speak with someone about lucid dreaming, I sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence since I need some seconds to translate a word (e.g I rather use “false awakening” than “falsches Erwachen”)
For autosuggestion, I agree that your native language is probably the one to choose.

For “voice commands” in your dreams it might be a different thing, though.Perhaps it is better when I don´t translate thing like “Lucidity x 1000” or “Stabilize dream!”.
First, I don´t like the german word for lucidity, and second it might work better if those aren´t words in the language you are used to.Then they become something like a magic spell, or think about the people in middle age who prayed in latin even if they didn´t understand.
If you do it that way, the words aren´t normal words anymore but some kind of symbols…

Perhaps I should even try saying those in french, or spanish, or a language that I don´t even know :smile:

Traumgänger

P.S: AI, hope I didn´t ask you yet, but where do you come from? I am from Stuttgart

hi, Traumgänger, I am from Hainichen near Chemnitz in Saxony.
What you said about the time you need to translate some words in a conversation is exactly what I encounter. I’m near saying that English is a better language than German. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m getting used to it through the net and the many English books I read, especially those about LDing.
Your thought of using a foreing language like a magic spell sounds interesting. maybe that increases the effects of voice commands.

my first language is dutch, and if i use autosuggestion to induce a LD i always have done it in dutch.
It is my feeling that when you use your first language it runs ‘deeper’ into your mind, like you can really feel your intention.
If i would try it in english it would be more like some kind of magical spell, and you put the power into the words, instead of your own intention.

Nonsense! :grin:

I’ve been learning German for close to a month now, and apart from the ungodly overuse of gender-specific spelling and sentance organisation rules, I find it to be a serious improvement over the scattered mixture of languages we call English.

I’d think that your native tounge would be most effective but maybe if you translate a phrase you use “i’m going to lucid dream tonight” into a different language and get to know it inside out and repeat it a lot to yourself and associate it only with dreaming so it’ll find its way to your dreams eventually and whenever you see it or hear it it’ll be an instant slap in the face since your subconsious knows that that phrase means your dreaming or gets you to think about being lucid. I don’t know how much sense that made.

basically take a dream que and translate it and since the only time you see or hear the phrase it makes you think about dreaming so when the phrase pops up in a dream you’ll know… maybe you could also associate the phrase with some RCs so when you hear/see the phrase in a dream you’ll automaticaly be in the right state of mind. bah I’m tired, I’m sure you all got the point, take something strange you don’t associate with anything else so when it does pop up the only thing it makes you think about is dreams. Same concept as repeating dream mantras in your native language except it’ll stand out more.

I apologize in advance if I am getting off topic here. My native language is American Sign Language since I’m deaf. I use my hand to communicate. For my command or intentions, I used to say them in English. Later, I have noticed that I started to think of them as pure emotional images when I go in a deep trance. I felt that it was more of my nature to express my command through emotions, images, and thoughts as if I was trying to say something telepathically along with emotions and images. So I started doing that and my lucid dreams frequent has increased a lot. Just two cents! When I command something in my Lucid Dreams, I command vocially even though I never learned how to speak. Who know how bad I speak in my LDs! Hehehehe! At least it works very well!